Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A research effort by Google corporation to make renewable energy viable has been a complete failure, according to the scientists who led the programme. After 4 years of effort, their conclusion is that renewable energy “simply won’t work”.
According to an interview with the engineers, published in IEEE;
“At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope …
Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.”
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change
There is simply no getout clause for renewables supporters. The people who ran the study are very much committed to the belief that CO2 is dangerous – they are supporters of James Hansen. Their sincere goal was not to simply install a few solar cells, but to find a way to fundamentally transform the economics of energy production – to make renewable energy cheaper than coal. To this end, the study considered exotic innovations barely on the drawing board, such as self erecting wind turbines, using robotic technology to create new wind farms without human intervention. The result however was total failure – even these exotic possibilities couldn’t deliver the necessary economic model.
The key problem appears to be that the cost of manufacturing the components of the renewable power facilities is far too close to the total recoverable energy – the facilities never, or just barely, produce enough energy to balance the budget of what was consumed in their construction. This leads to a runaway cycle of constructing more and more renewable plants simply to produce the energy required to manufacture and maintain renewable energy plants – an obvious practical absurdity.
As a review by The Register of the IEEE article states.
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
I must say I’m personally surprised at the conclusion of this study. I genuinely thought that we were maybe a few solar innovations and battery technology breakthroughs away from truly viable solar power. But if this study is to be believed, solar and other renewables will never in the foreseeable future deliver meaningful amounts of energy.
[Post updated at Eric’s request to correct the source of the second quote – Anthony]
Talk about having your head stuck up a dark place! Others have been screaming about this for years! Years!
Though you should give these Google engineers credit for honesty — the fact is that they never bothered PERSONALLY to even consider this rather obvious problem. Someone at Google had to order this study — undoubtedly expecting different answers from the ones the engineers gave.
The engineers who did this were big green supporters and over the years never bothered to PERSONALLY question any of this? it took an order from the boss to make them think? No thinking about green propaganda unless the boss orders it?
Having had this startling lesson about green propaganda will these engineers start to PERSONALLY reconsider the green horror stories about evil CO2? Will they start investigating CO2 propaganda on their own?
That is doubtful. They pulled their heads out of their green asses and got a glimpse of daylight — and undoubtedly it frightened them so much they have stuck their heads back up there even further then before. Probably they have been going to green rallies and shouting in support as loudly as they can. (Shouting loudly prevents you from thinking. Can’t do two things are once you know. Gating behavior.)
And their boss is never going to order any new energy studies from them. They have probably now been ordered to study new garbage management systems. (God help them if they report that doing it the green way is a major energy loser.)
Will these engineers ever visit Watts Up With That? No. That would be uncomforting.
Eugene WR Gallun
Hey, Eugene! Have you never worked in the corporate world? Have you ever worked for a billionaire -or just any boss- who couldn’t be wrong?
It’s the way we’re wired… we have a need to be right that can lead us and others to ruin, if left unchecked. Brin, et al, are not immune from that which afflicts us all.
How could the google “engineers” have been so dumb? Any savvy engineer w/basic thermo knowledge should know the energy density of solar or wind is way too low for modern society requirements.
Wind-power is for pumping well-water into storage tanks in the 1800s, and solar is for directly warming your house in winter w/properly-located windows. That’s about it.
non sequitor “energy density of solar or wind is way too low for modern society requirements”.
A laugher for us old timers who were around during Apollo:
I started at CMU in 1969. Computers filled the room, but I never saw a vacuum tube computer there. Later at DEC, I saw pieces of
The first transistorized computer was built in 1955, Lincoln Lab’s TX-0, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-0
The authors might be thinking of the computers used in the SAGE air defense system from the 1950s to 1980s, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/FSQ-7_Combat_Direction_Central . Only the government could afford to keep those systems running that long.
Sigh, kids these days….
Yeah, UNIVAC was not even tubes, and it was designed in the 50s.
Mak
Tubes, discrete transistors. Is there really a difference? /sarc
But keep in mind this is the company which brought you Gmail–cutting edge e-mail technology from ~1991.
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1126485
Looks like Captain Obvious got a job at Google. So much money has been wasted installing energy systems into the grid that are not efficient. Taking them out one day will cost a fortune. I’m waiting to see what happens to those who have to reshingle their roof when it’s covered with solar panels. The cost to remove, the cost to reshingle, the cost to reinstall…
Reshingling–I bet that cost wasn’t / isn’t accounted for!
(It’s best to have a metal roof anyway.)
Thatched!
R-value, green, pound for pound carbon sequestration. Gotta do something with GD Phragmites.
Thanks, Eric.
“The key problem appears to be that the cost of manufacturing the components of the renewable power facilities is far too close to the total recoverable energy” is a stroke of genius.
But the real key problem is that CO2 and H2O are benign gases, in fact indispensable for all life, not pollutants.
I would say that makes them both benevolent, not benign. 😉
Mark
MODS: sorry about the @google.com in my previous post email. It was… dunno.
“Large wind and solar power farms have the economics to go toe-to-toe with the cheapest fossil fuel-based power supplies in the United States according to the venerable financial advisory firm Lazard Ltd. Thanks to falling costs and rising efficiency, reports Lazard in an analysis released this week, utility-scale installations of solar panels and wind turbines now produce power at a cost that’s competitive with natural gas and coal-fired generating stations—even without subsidies.”
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/someday-is-now-for-solar-wind-power-says-lazard
http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf
Which is why we must maintain the $0.02/kWh PTC!!! The flat out lies of the “renewables” community are disgusting.
How about at midnight?
Everyone should read the piece. They don’t really recant. At the end their argument goes something like this:
1) Assume you fall off the Earth if you travel too far (400ppm CO2, the “Hansen Limit”).
2) Assume that if we just did more R&D in a perfectly coordinated portfolio that we would have new technologies to do what the authors couldn’t.
3) Wait on your unicorn farm for some stupid benefactor to fund said vision.
Exactly. Top engineers my eye.
Mark
OK, one more time. Climate Change IS happening, There’s not a doubt of it. Climate change has happened ever since this planet has existed, and it will continue as long as this planet exists.
The only real questions are to what extent humans are responsible for the present changes, and what— if anything– we can do about the present changes. I submit that so far, the choices of what we can do have been laughable. Do you REALLY think that changing incandescent bulbs out in favor of CFLs is going to make that big a difference to be noticeable? Electric cars? Great, but the problem is that they have to get power from somewhere, and right now that still seems to mean coal-fired powerplants for the most part. Hmmm, that’s going to need a little bit of work. This thread is showing just how poor a return we get from solar and wind power. Wind is great if you’re propelling a tall ship across the ocean, it seems to leave something to be desired to power a city the size of Chicago.
If you want to live like it’s the 21st century, we’re going to have to use fuel–no getting around that for a good long while.
This is the Money Quote:
[quote]
We decided to combine our energy innovation study’s best-case scenario results with Hansen’s climate model to see whether a 55 percent emission cut by 2050 would bring the world back below that 350-ppm threshold. Our calculations revealed otherwise. [b]Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use. So our best-case scenario, which was based on our most optimistic forecasts for renewable energy, would still result in severe climate change[/], with all its dire consequences: shifting climatic zones, freshwater shortages, eroding coasts, and ocean acidification, among others.
[/quote]
jai mitchell,
That’s not the money quote, that’s the stupid quote.
There is zero indication any of that is happening.
Actually, that is the money quote. A stark admission that the ultimate effect of renewables is to increase the very CO2 levels they are trying to reduce:
Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially
Jai, try using ‘less than’ and ‘greater than’ symbols instead of square brackets. Use blockquote instead of quote. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/test/
Also there is a brilliant WUWT instruction manual here.
It was made by Ric Werme
It even tells you how to make those links to webpages.
Oh good, another person to help with the reminders about my Guide to WUWT. 🙂
They have learned this lesson the hard way:
” After already receiving a controversial $1.6 billion construction loan from U.S. taxpayers, the wealthy investors of a California solar power plant now want a $539 million federal grant to pay off their federal loan.
“This is an attempt by very large cash generating companies that have billions on their balance sheet to get a federal bailout, i.e. a bailout from us – the taxpayer for their pet project,” said Reason Foundation VP of Research Julian Morris. “It’s actually rather obscene.”
The Ivanpah solar electric generating plant is owned by Google and renewable energy giant NRG, which are responsible for paying off their federal loan. If approved by the U.S. Treasury, the two corporations will not use their own money, but taxpayer cash to pay off 30 percent of the cost of their plant, but taxpayers will receive none of the millions in revenues the plant will generate over the next 30 years.”http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/11/solar-plant-wants-to-pay-off-massive-gov
“The plant went online in December of last year. After operating for most of 2014, the plant seems to have hit a significant problem. It’s only producing about a quarter of the power it has promised. That could present a bit of a challenge paying back its loan. So what are they doing? Why they’re asking for a federal grant, of course. That is to say, they are asking for taxpayer dollars to pay back the loan that they got from the federal government that is guaranteed to be paid back with taxpayer dollars should the project fail.”…
…”And one final, somewhat amusing note: How is the plant making up for problems with collecting sunlight to produce energy? It has gotten permission from the government to use more natural gas than it had originally planned, potentially meaning that the biggest solar thermal power station in the world may depend on fracking to supplement part of its operations.”
When dreams hit reality head on. Not a pretty sight.
Somehow these would-be energy exsperts managed to avoid any mention of the solution their hero, James Hansen made more than a year ago – use nuclear, stupid!
That’s the bush they were beating around, but they couldn’t quite spit it out.
The whole thing was a big tight rope walk.
What they really, really need, to save the planet, is MAGIC. But failing that, nukes will do.
Reblogged this on News You May Have Missed and commented:
Shocker: Top Google Engineers Say Renewable Energy ‘Simply won’t work’
Look where green Demark is:
http://www.sust-it.net/europe-energy-costs.php
Yes, look
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage
But that data takes no account of the costs of living, which is high in all Scandinavian Countries ( and I have lived in Norway,and Sweden, and visited Denmark many times)..
When I lived in Norway, my rule of thumb was that if something was only twice as expensive as it was in the UK, it was cheap, and only if 3 times as expensive as in the UK would I even begin to look around to see whether I could buy an item cheaper somewhere else. Obviously alcohol, especially dining out is very much more expensive than 3 times ratio..
Reblogged this on A Conservative Christian Man.
Shocker…
I feel like the title of this article does not convey the intent of the Google author’s IEEE piece. It implies that RE won’t work in an economic sense, but when the point is made in the article, it is about something entirely different. The two authors explored whether widespread deployment of RE could bring CO2 levels down to 350 ppm. Their conclusion was it would not, not with current RE technologies such as wind and solar. But in their conclusions, there are no words about abandoning RE research efforts – in fact, they press for a “moon program” level of effort to find new solutions that can help us not just reduce increases in CO2 emissions, but reduce them.
“in fact, they press for a “moon program” level of effort to find new solutions that can help us not just reduce increases in CO2 emissions, but reduce them.”
Which is what Lomborg has been saying since forever. (I.e., put the money into research, not into mass production yet.) It may also spur funding of mini-fusion gadgets like the one Lockheed is working on.
This Google finding will start an examination among some warmists about the real costs of renewables. If they begin to realize that they have been sold a bill of goods by utopians like Avory Lovins et al., it may start to turn the herd.
Simple physics and natural (read scientific) laws prevent such. This is a cash-cow hoax akin to getting taxpayers to fund a perpetual motion machine.
Ever heard of “Conservation of Energy” and “resistance” in power transmission?
Paule
Re: “natural (read scientific) laws prevent such.”
That is too strong a claim, (far different from energy conservation), for which you have shown no evidence.
Having not achieved the goal, of renewable cheaper than coal, with the methods tested, does not mean it is unachievable.
Edison said “he had not failed, but had found 10,000 ways that won’t work”
True, genuine scientific study and experimentation will eventually find a way. Our current level of technology was unthinkable 30 years ago except in science-fiction literature.
Perseverance will succeed but time is required as well as real (as opposed to junk) science experimentation and testing. Until the “ah-ha!” moment occurs and the breakthrough can be tested and validated, keep the politically motivated half-steps and financially foolish requirement to rely only on ‘renewable’ or ‘clean’ energy at an acceptable cost (really cheap, roughly 50% below the cost of coal-fired energy). All the energy reliant technology the world now relies on must be fed and the first really efficient and cheap method of generating cheap and reliable energy will make the discoverer wealthy beyond their dreams.
Paul
Yes Perseverance is needed. And funding the RD&D to achieve it.
See Bjorn Lomborg & Copenhagen Consensus. on energy & RD&D.
Agree on initial goal of 50% below coal-fired energy, and challenge goal of better.
PS Re “beyond dreams” – Dream bigger.
While we’re waiting for this deus ex machina, can we not turn out the lights and revert to living in caves for the duration?
Reminds me of a study by the University of Oregon a few years ago. They found that many of the people who elected to use doctor assisted suicide suffered from depression. Shocking.
The only inaccuracy in the story was that Greens “admit” that it is true. Even the article linked shows that it is not an “admission.” That renewables cannot power our civilization is their entire premise. It is our civilization that has to go, in their explicit view (quoted in the linked article), and cutting off any viable energy source, especially a clean, cheap, abundant one, is they wish to achieve it. They are right about that. It will destroy us. But that is their goal.
The article actually ends on a more hopeful note than Worral would have us believe. I see it more as a “call to arms” than raising a white flag, but maybe that’s the optimist in me. The authors, naturally being engineers, focus only on the technical-supply side, and not the social-demand side. As the effects of climate change become more apparent, I believe we will see a sharp drop in energy use and demand for fossil fuels, even in China (where they need to do something about air pollution, fast)
First, there will be a greater demand for energy in China as the world cools for somewhere between 30 and 120 years, depending on what the Sun does. There is no global warming, but global cooling requires energy in order to resist its effects. Also, it makes no sense that you predict that there would be a sharp drop in energy use if there was global warming.
Second, China is well aware of their current air pollution and is working to catch up. Right now they are behind in fitting the proper scrubbers and precipitators on their coal-fired power plants, but they intend to catch up eventually. The demand for energy outweighs the temporary pollution, and they are aware of the effects on their people. And, do not forget, CO2 is not pollution but is PLANT FOOD, and we need more not less, particularly as the planet cools and food production slows; CO2 can counter this effect.
The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives realize what is practical and feasible and are willing to live with the reality and limitations the world has given us. Liberals, on the other hand, want to personalize the issues and make them social goals regardless of whether what they want is practical, feasible, or logical, always making it an emotional issue. They simply have the attitude that the real world will do what they want because it’s what they want, a very immature attitude.
Sure, it would be nice if everybody could have everything, but, in the real world, that is simply impossible. The best substitute for this pie-in-the-sky impossibility is to allow everybody the freedom to pursue and earn all of the things they want (free enterprise and capitalism). There will always be some who simply do not want to work or cannot work. There are safety nets for those who cannot work, but there should be none for those that do not want to work—the realistic conservative approach to this problem.
The liberal solution, in place of a free market, is to impose socialism on everybody but the ruling elite (somebody has to impose the socialist policies, making it Communism). There would be equal poverty for everybody, as without capitalism, there is no wealth production and limited wealth to spread around. Liberals refuse to recognize the wealth production of capitalism and like to pretend that there is a limited amount of wealth out there. They ingenuously contend that, if somebody gains wealth, it must be taken from others, who then become poorer. With capitalism, wealth grows and even the poor get wealthier—we have the wealthiest poor in the world, such that they are part of the 1% the liberals like to demonize. As Margaret Thatcher said so succinctly, “Socialism only works until you run out of other people’s money.”
Curiously the [Umayyads] solved the problem a 1000 years ago.
But for cities of a modern scale they will need electricity to power desalination plants.
And then fountains.
Lots and lots of huge fountains as tall as sky-scrapers, scrubbing the air of dust and SOx and NOx.
It won’t be cheap to turn Beijing into Rivendell but the Rainbow City would have breathable air.
UmayadsUmayyads@ur momisugly “Patrick” – 6:14am – Pure Sine Wave inverters are commonplace now, and the efficiency is on a par with the older “Modified Sine Wave” units. Also, you cannot simply rectify 110v AC down to 12v DC, and you won’t find a transformer in a car alternator. The windings generate at low voltage (either 12 or 24 volts) and this is directly rectified for the output.
The old man sat quietly before the job interviewer, obviously humbled by life, but with fire still in his eyes.
Human Resources Mgr. asks, “What is your biggest weakness?”
Old Man: “Honesty”.
Human Resources Mgr: “I don’t think honesty is a weakness. ”
Old man: “I don’t give a damn what you think. “
Wisdom trumps foolishness.
Solar energy is most useful at the end-user where it would decrease the end-user’s load drawn from the grid. As a major source of energy, it is simply impractical, such that “green jobs are essentially all in manufacturing or in the constant maintenance even solar panels require. And, of course, the sun sets and we have no good way to store that energy that is economical. Wind energy, as with solar, has a huge land footprint, requires an extensive infrastructure, is not high quality energy, can only be reasonably distributed 50 miles, has many maintenance issues, and relatively short lifetimes, all negatives, not including the fact that the wind dies, the turbines affect each other and the surrounding environment by changing the wind speed, and the human health and bird and bat problems. The fact that both solar and wind turbine energy is so much more expensive than other sources bespeaks to the un-sustainability of these energy sources. The requirement for rare metals itself is a stake through the heart of these strategies for producing energy. And, then, imagine the added problems of putting wind turbines offshore, with the footings, the wind, the waves, and the saline corrosion problems that go with it. It’s just plain insane, and indicates that there must be somebody profiting big time from such a stupid endeavour. We are back to crony capitalism being a driving force to these ideas.
Please don’t use the phrase “crony capitalism.” There is no such thing. Capitalism abhors government involvement, which is what the “crony” intends to convey. It is a smear, by the left, of the true threat to their existence: capitalism. They need to tar capitalism in the same fashion they tar every other opposition to their control. Indeed, they are simply trying to pass make their fascism look like its roots are in their true enemy, capitalism.
Mark
Remember:
Progressives LOVE alternative energy – as long as it doesn’t work!
Wind, solar, unicorn tears, whatever. But, find an alternate way to drill that works like a charm – fracking – and they become completely unhinged.
Could have saved Google four years of effort and millions of ill-spent dollars with a few calculations on the back of a large envelope. ENERGY DENSITY!
Claude
The foundational issue is: Energy Return On Energy Invested – EROEI or EROI, not “density”.
Why didn’t they just google it?
Nuclear,Coal and Hydroelectric power production are examples of HIGH mass power producers.Solar,Wind and political hot air are examples of LOW mass power production,that is why it can’t compete in the market as it delivers too little energy in return for cost and land use.
It took those clowns 4 years to find out renewables simply won´t work.
Had they ‘Googled’ the subject it would have taken them three minutes to find out.
This way it’s going to take them half a century to find out CO2 is not a problem and climate change is not caused by humanity.
One visit at WUWT……
…and think of the raw material left rotting by untold thousands of comedians who could have made mega bucks with this stuff over the past 4…no make it 10…no make it 20 years. If they start now it will only produce groans by the audience and shouts of, “It’s a little late in the game to suddenly see the stupidity doncha think?” by disgruntled concert goers. Mr. George Carlin, ya died too early.
They now have 4 years worth of a high salary in the bank. What’s not to like? /sarc